When they taught me that what matt… was not the strict iambic line goo… over the page but the variations in that line and the tension produ… on the ear by the surprise of diff…

I married you for all the wrong re… charmed by your dangerous family h… by the innocent muscles, bulging l… weapons under your shirt, by your… the colors of painted scraps of su…

For Jews, the Cossacks are always… Therefore I think the sun spot on… is melanoma. Therefore I celebrat… New Year’s Eve by counting my annual dead.

1. THE SACRIFICE On this tile the knife like a sickle-moon hangs in the painted air

The door of winter is frozen shut, and like the bodies of long extinct animals, cars lie abandoned wherever

When our cars touched When you lifted the hood of mine To see the intimate workings under… When we were bound together By a pulse of pure energy,

We think of hidden in a white dres… among the folded linens and sachet… of well-kept cupboards, or just ou… sending jellies and notes with no… to all the wondering Amherst neigh…

I remember what my father told me: There is an age when you are most… He was just past fifty then, Was it something about the trees t… There is an age when you are most…

I sing a song of the croissant and of the wily French who trick themselves daily back to the world

I am only leaving you for a handful of days but it feels as thought i will be gone forever the way the door closes

When I taught you at eight to ride a bicycle, loping along beside you as you wobbled away

I want to write you a love poem as headlong as our creek after thaw when we stand

The gathering family throws shadows around us, it is the late afternoon Of the family. There is still enough light

It was early May, I think a moment of lilac or dogwood when so many promises are made it hardly matters if a few are bro… My mother and father still hovered

Some say it was a pear Eve ate. Why else the shape of the womb,